The Spiritualist (40 page)

“You did more than that.” She reached for a bundle that lay at her side, half hidden by the coverlet, and pulled it into her lap. It was a gray wool scarf, unraveling and stiff with what looked like mildew, and when she lifted it I could smell the mold and the dust. But she held it reverently in her hands, teary-eyed. “I sent Charley to find it this morning. Do you know what it is?”

“It looks to be a very old scarf.”

“You don’t remember what my boy said last night?”

It took a moment for me to remember and then it came to me like a distant memory.

“He told me to look for this scarf,” Dorothy went on, and I was startled. I had just begun to believe my visions might be true, and this material proof of them shocked me into silence. I told myself it was just a scarf, but the sight of it raised a strange and frightening conviction within me.

Dorothy didn’t lift her gaze from it; she twisted a loose, crinkled strand of yarn about her finger. “When Everett died, so soon after Johnny, I couldn’t bear to go into the schoolroom. I just locked the door and walked away. I kept thinking I’d go there someday, but I never did, and then I got to be so old and feeble—such an old woman. Ah, well, you see how impossible it would be now.”

She sighed. I said nothing, waiting.

“I made Johnny this scarf. I wasn’t much of a knitter, and he never liked it. Too itchy, he used to say. But I made him wear it, and then one day, he said he lost it. Oh, I was so angry with him. I’d taken such trouble with it too—look here, see these tassels?” She held it out to me. “Took me all day to knot the dratted things, and then I didn’t do it right, so the damn thing kept coming apart. But I was determined that he wear it. I repaired and repaired it. Stupid, isn’t it? I could’ve bought a hundred cashmere ones, and he would’ve liked them better.”

“When I was young,” I confided, “my mother used to embroider handkerchiefs for me. But she was never content to just make borders or fancy corners. She turned them into tapestry—there was so much thread on them I couldn’t use them.” I smiled, remembering, and then melancholy came over me. “There was a time later when I would have given anything for her to make me one of those handkerchiefs.”

Dorothy nodded. “You see how it is, then, child. But you know, I’d forgotten all about the scarf until last night. It took Charley a couple hours to find it—it was shoved into the windowsill—there was a crack in the pane that one of the boys must have made and was trying to hide from me.”

“No doubt they felt guilty over it,” I offered. What else could I say?

“Oh, it wasn’t the crack that mattered. It was what was on the scarf.” She reached over to the bedside table, curving her gnarled fingers about something. “It was this.”

She opened her hand to me, and lying on her palm was a brooch. It was obviously old, and quite expensive gold filigree, beautifully done, surrounding a huge square-cut emerald bordered with small diamonds. The stones were dulled from their years trapped within a molding scarf, but it would be a stunning piece once cleaned.

“It was my mother’s. Johnny loved it. He would sit there sometimes while I dressed and beg me to put it on, and then he would say: ‘Mama, it looks like mysteries in there,’ and he would lean close, as if he could peer inside it.” Dorothy shook her head, laughing a little. “He was the most inventive child.”

“Why was it with the scarf?”

“It went missing one day. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Of course, I thought Johnny had taken it, but he denied it over and over again.” She sighed. “Of course he had. He’d pinned it to the scarf and forgot all about it, I suppose. Until you called him from the spheres.” She looked up at me and held out the brooch. “I want you to have it, Evelyn.”

For a moment, I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. I stared down at the jewel in her hand. “You can’t mean that. It was your mother’s. It’s no doubt worth a fortune.”

“It’s worth a great deal, yes. But what you’ve brought me is priceless. The boys want you to have it. Why else would they have sent the message?”

I shook my head. “I owe you so much already. I can’t possibly—”

“Child, I’ve lived a long time. I don’t care anymore for material things, and I want to reward you. You could use it too, I think. It’d be yours alone. You can keep it or sell it, as you wish. I expect you could live on it for a year if you had to.”

How potent her words were. I stared at the emerald, and suddenly I felt a great hunger for it, for the security it offered.
“What’s wrong with charging for such a service, hmmm?”

“If you don’t take it, it’ll only go to Michel when I’m gone,” Dorothy said.

I reached out. The piece still held the warmth of her hand as I took it into mine. Even through the grime, the diamonds bordering the emerald seemed to glimmer.

“If the Athertons keep on with their suit against you, you’ll need more than that brooch,” Dorothy said.

I glanced up at her. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, speculative, as if she were trying to take my measure.

“I can reward you handsomely, Evelyn, if you keep bringing my boys to me.”

“What about Michel?”

“He won’t want to share. But there’s enough for both of you.”

To say he wouldn’t want to share was an understatement. He would be angry, and I had the sense that Dorothy not only knew that, but she was also deliberately making it so. I felt the work of her jealousy in this; she wanted to put a wedge between Michel and me.

I fingered the stone, rubbing at the dirt with the ball of my thumb. It raised an oily shine. The Athertons were trying to take everything from me, and I knew with desperate longing how easily Dorothy’s money could change that. My life could be returned to me. Another thought intruded, a small and niggling seed of an idea that bloomed quickly into possibility. Would the Athertons be so quick to prosecute if I were Dorothy Bennett’s heir? If Dorothy began to depend on me more than Michel, perhaps I could convince her that she no longer required him. I needed protection, and Dorothy needed someone to leave a fortune to. Why shouldn’t it be me?

“As you wish,” I said finally. “You must know I’m your servant.”

“That’s fine, child. That’s good.” She leaned her head back against the pillow, yanking at the blankets as she did so.

I tucked the jewel into my pocket and rose, taking the blanket from her hands, pulling it into place, tucking it securely around her. “What a pity it is you didn’t have a daughter to care for you.”

“You’re like a daughter to me.”

“Well, I’ll certainly try to be. All you need do is call, and I’ll come. I’ll bring your sons whenever you wish it. But you may have to convince Michel of the benefit. I suppose he feels they’ve abandoned him for me.”

She opened her eyes again, frowning. “He’s said nothing like that.”

“I could be wrong. But… it’s nothing, I suppose.”

“What’s nothing?”

“I think he feels they overstimulate you. I’m afraid that if you told him how generous you were to me, it might give him another reason to stop their coming.”

She twisted her hand to grip my fingers. “Well then, we mustn’t tell him.”

I hesitated. “Are you certain?”

“Good Lord, yes! I don’t want anything to come between me and my boys. You come to me when I call, child. You leave Michel to me. I haven’t signed those adoption papers yet, and he knows it.”

I smiled. “It will be our secret.”

I
FELT NICELY
smug when I left Dorothy’s room, and the brooch was a reassuring weight in my pocket. But my smugness lasted only a moment, because as I stepped into the hallway, I saw that Michel’s bedroom door was open, and I heard him talking to one of the menservants. My body responded to his voice with a quick anticipation, a pull that was nearly irresistible. I could hardly be smug when he had this power over me.

The things I’d discussed with Dorothy were dangerous; I’d been plotting against him, and I knew that if he discovered it, he would try to stop me. The question was how. I retreated quickly to my room, but once I was there, I felt strange, light-headed and dizzy. I grabbed onto something—a chair—to steady myself as I felt the press from the other side; the bright light of day dimmed before my eyes. I heard her voice:
Listen to me. I’ve come to save you
, and I felt her flooding into me, taking over my thoughts and my pulse.

I was back in that boardinghouse room, and she was watching Michel from where she lay on the bed, and he on the end of it, writing feverishly with the nub of a pencil on the back of a broadside page, his sharply planed face too thin, taut with concentration, his hair falling forward to hide his eyes.

“Her family’s wealthy,” he was saying. “One of the oldest in New York City. Knickerbockers. And she married a Brahman.” He made a sound, an amused snort. “A royal marriage of sorts.”

Adele yawned. “What’s a Knickerbocker?”

“Her sister lost two sons.”

“Her sister? Does she live in Boston too?”

“She lost them to cholera and scarlet fever. Or diphtheria.
Mon dieu
, which is it?”

“Does it matter? She’ll be amazed that you knew them to be dead at all.”

He lifted his head to glare at her. “Do you say these things to annoy me,
chère
, or because you’re truly stupid?”

She plunged out of bed, throwing herself at him so the paper crumpled and the pencil fell to the floor, and he had to catch her or be borne to the floor himself. “Why are you so mean to me? I hate it here, you know I do! Every day I expect to hear him knock on the door. I thought I saw him in the market—”

“It could’ve been anyone.”

“He looked so angry! I can’t go back to him. I won’t! He hates me.”

“I thought you said he loved you.”

“He loves me, he hates me—oh, it’s miserable! He’s not a man. He’s not like you… . Can’t we just go now? You promised me France!”

“France takes money,” he said coldly.

“He’ll take me away. Doesn’t that frighten you?”

He seemed to soften at her words.
“Oui.”

“Then let’s go. We can find rich grieving women somewhere else.”

“Where else,
chère
? To leave, we need money, eh? Or a patron. We’ve neither. This is our best chance.”

“I don’t need all this.” She grabbed the paper from between them and crumpled it into a ball, which she pitched across the room. “The spirits come to me. You said so yourself. I hear their voices—”

“Oui.”

“I heard Milo Grau’s wife. And the Hawking child.”

“After I told you about them,” he pointed out. “Would you have heard them if I didn’t tell you what to listen for?”

“You told me nothing about Ian.”

“Your own son,” he said patiently. “Who knew him better than you?”

She went very still upon his lap. “I could hear their voices without all your notes. They come to me.”

“Would you care to try it,
chère
? In the middle of a circle, when they’re all waiting to hear rapping from a loved one’s spirit? Would you choose to leave it to chance?”

She pushed away from him, landing on the floor as gracefully as a cat. She paced to where she’d thrown the crumpled broadside and picked it up from the floor. “You doubt me?”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not I do. You won’t throw away the paper.”

She marched to the chamber pot and lifted the lid. She threw the paper into it with a smile of satisfaction. “Really?”

Michel only smiled. “It’s already in your head,
chère
, eh? Everything I told you.”

“What if I forget it?”

“Then you’ll fail. But if you fail, there’ll be no money, and we’ll stay here longer.” He looked at the door. “Did I hear a knock?”

She froze, crossing her arms over her chemise-covered breasts. I felt her fear and saw how wild she looked with it until she realized he was laughing.

“How mean you are! I wonder sometimes if you hate me too.”

His laughter died abruptly. “
Non.
Forgive me.”

“What would you do if he came? Would you give me back to him?” She came to the bed. When he said nothing, she grabbed his shoulders, pressing her nails into his skin. “Would you?”

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her onto the bed on top of him, but she held herself away. I felt her looking for truth as she stared into those elusive blue eyes. “Would you give me back to him?” she demanded.

“I would kill him,” he said, and there was a matter-of-fact viciousness in his voice that thrilled her. “Would that make you happy,
chère
?”

T
HE VISION CLEARED
, the shadows parted like mist in the sunlight, and I found myself bent over the chair, breathing hard and deeply nauseated from her possession. I barely made it to the chamber pot before I vomited. Afterward, I knelt there, pressing my hand to the tight band of my corset, gasping. The words Michel had spoken in the vision stayed with me.
“I would kill him.”
How easily he’d said them, as if murder was no more difficult than choosing the fabric for a frock coat.

The vision’s heaviness was impossible; I could barely breathe. I wondered why she’d shown it to me, and when it had been. A year ago? Two? Or only months ago—even weeks? Who had they been talking about? What man had Michel been so ready to kill? An impossible thought came to me, but I could not dismiss it. I wondered if Robert Callahan had been right all those days ago, when he’d asked me if Peter had a mistress. Could that be the connection I’d sensed between Adele and my husband? Could she have been the reason Peter was killed?